You have approximately 48 hours once you enter the death zone.
Your body starts slowly shutting down almost immediately, so once you get into the death zone (the last 800 metres of the mountain) you have- at the very most- 48 hours to reach the summit of Everest and get back to the safety of Base Camp (which, contrary to popular belief, is not at the bottom of the mountain. It's more than halfway up). The moment you enter that last 800 metres, your body begins to literally die. It's pure willpower that will get you to the peak and back down again at that point. Your body is working against you.
Of the more than 200+ deaths on Everest, almost all have happened in the death zone. Summit fever they call it, when climbers are so obbessed with reaching the summit, they'll ignore the fact that their body physically can't get them there.
It's not a bad death, really. You huddle up, then slowly the pain and terror and cold ebbs away and you just fall asleep, never to wake up again.
They leave most of the bodies there, of course. Just leave them wherever they have died. There are several reasons for this- number one, it's far too risky for the Sherpas to try to get them back. In 1984, two Shepas died trying to move Hannelore Schmatz's body. She had died in an attempt in 1979 and for the next five years she made for a gruesome sight for all those who climbed the mountain- frozen in a laid back, almost causal position, eyes frozen open, hair blowing in the wind. After the failed attempt to move her, they left her where she was until one summer they went for the first climb of the season to find her body gone, blown over the edge during a winter storm.
Another reason for leaving the bodies is more practical- in low altitudes people weight 5x more than they do in normal life. Try carrying a solid, immovable corpse down a mountain as your body is shutting itself down- you'll soon find out why it's almost impossible.
The final reason is perhaps the most noble. Most climbers agree that, should they die (and there's between 6 and 15% chance they will, depending on the weather that year), their bodies should be left there, as a testament to their brave spirit, in the way that sailors are buried at the sea.
It's often said that Everest is the the world's largest open air graveyard- but it's only for those beautiful and crazy enough to dream. To spent eternity on the mountain is an honour, a consolation prize. You didn't survive- but you get one hell of a graveyard.
The first time I climbed Everest the sight of bodies shocked me. I had been told to prepare for the sight of brightly coloured ski clothing containing well preserved human remains, (pushed carefully off the path by the Sherpas but used as pointer markers to find your bearings) but nothing quite prepared me for the moment that I had to step over the twitching leg of a man who had been caught in a storm the day before. Seeing those on the brink of death is the worst thing. It's human nature to want to save our fellow man but all of use know the score. If you get stuck in the death zone, nobody can help you. It's just not possible, they don't have the strength to carry you out of there and you will die up there in the snow. That's what we all agree to before we begin the climb. We all know the risks- and when you encounter one of those poor souls in their final moments, all you can do offer up a prayer for them and focus hard on making sure that you're not next.
So yes, bodies are part of the Everest experience. You will see them and you have to be prepared for it. You can travel in a group of 20 people but ultimately, it's just you and the mountain. If you survive is between you and nature, no one else can help you. All climbers know that you save yourself first, or you both die. Everest has no time for heroes.
I remember the first time I summited the mountain that I felt no sense of achievement, no rush of adrenaline. Few people do. It's not the majestic standing on top of the world, raising your arms and surveying the clouds below that non climbers probably picture.
It's bitterly cold, so cold that it chills every inch of you down to your lungs. Your body is closing down and weighs far more than it usually does. Every single step takes willpower, imagine the most exhausted you've ever felt then triple it. Then triple it again. Your body is shutting down as there simply isn't enough oxygen for you to stay alive. Every step is a mental struggle not to just sit down for 5 minutes and rest. If you do that, you're not getting back up. The amount of willpower it takes is staggering.
Summiting is a grim victory. Time for a brief photo but also the knowledge that THIS is the real challenge, getting back down. A large percentage of those who die on Everest have actually reached the summit, they die on the return journey. Coming down is harder. Summit fever has worn off. You've been in the death zone hours. Climbing downwards is much more difficult. You've used every ounce of energy you possess climbing upwards. You've used more oxygen that you should've and you haven't saved enough to climb down.
Coming down is brutal. People don't realise just how hard it is, I think there's a concensus amongst the general public that summiting Everest is an achievement. It's not. Getting back down is the achievement. The real euphoria kicks in when you're back in sight of base camp. Then the disbelief hits you. I did it! I climbed Everest! I stood on top of the world!
My second summit was harder. We lost a young Sherpa named Tenzin in an avalanche about halfway into the death zone. We pushed on through a horrendous brittle storm and barely made the summit. I lost the tips of two fingers to frostbite. They blackened and rotted and when the surgeon at base camp cut them off, the scalpel slid through the dead skin like a hot knife through butter, only stopping to crunch over the bones.
I'd have preferred to lose toes rather than fingers, as fingers are more essential to climbing- but I only lost the tips. It could have been worse.
You have to love mountains to climb them. You have to be addicted to the cold, harsh, unforgiving, lonely, brutal landscape. I'm not saying that everyone who climbs mountains loves them, Everest gets plenty of people climbing just because they want to stand at the highest spot in the world- but to be a climber, a real climber, you have to love and respect mountains.
It's funny because I'm terrified of the sea, yet the highest peaks on earth make my soul soar. Perhaps coming from a landlocked mountainous country does that too you- being from Switzerland is a dream for a climber, but not for a surfer. Stick me in the wildest, most isolated mountain range in the world and I'm perfectly happy. Stick me in the middle of the ocean and I'd rather drown than face trying to survive in the unknown.
People don't know much about what professional climbers do. In fact, I think a lot of people are surprised that there are professional climbers- that it's not just an expensive hobby.
Basically, I am sponsored to go to the most remote, difficult places on earth and climb them. At this moment, wherever you are, wherever you are reading this- there is a professional climber right now somewhere, miles and miles away from civilisation, thousands of miles from the bustle of the city, the people going about their daily life, the bars and clubs and schools and supermarkets- right now he's out there completely alone in a snowy wasteland that you can barely comprehend, tackling a mountain. He is so remote and alone that the rest of us, the 7 billion people he shares this planet with are as distant as stars in the night sky for him. Think on that for a moment.
Being Swiss, my first real big climbs were the Matterhorn and the Eiger, both interesting, technical mountains to climb.
I am a rational man. You have to be, of course. You can't climb your way around the world without being practical, rational and pragmatic. That said, I've always assigned personalities to mountains. I'm not the only one, almost all climbers do it.
The Matterhorn is one of the deadliest peaks in world, statistically. In 150 years she's claimed 500 lives, but she's not as dangerous as that makes you believe. Thousands and thousands of people have climbed her, including huge numbers of inexperienced climbers. Such a vast number of people have attempted it that of course she has the highest death rate. She was the first real mountain I summited and I've climbed her so many times that she is like family to me. Her hold on me is almost maternal and I always think of with loving affection. The Matterhorn isn't to be conquered in my eyes, she is the mother of all my ambitions. Climbing her is like coming home.
The Eiger has a younger energy (although is technically the same age as the Matterhorn). The Eiger is a deeply challenging climb and he's not for the faint hearted- but the overall feel of the mountain is friendly, familiar.
Everest is a holy mountain for the Sherpas. I remember Nawang, a Sherpa friend of mine, telling me that the reason Everest claims so many lives is to remind us that for all our cleverness, we cannot have complete control over nature. Everest is kind, he said, but she cannot possibly allow us all to climb her without reprimand. He's right, of course and Everest's energy to me has always felt deeply majestic. It is impossible to be upon her and not feel the sheer humbling majesty of her force.
Kilimanjaro is gentle and wild all at once. Not a real climb in the true sense of the word, it's just a trek to the top, but she is beautiful and ancient, proud and fierce.
Pakistan's K2 was always the one though. Everyone knows that Everest is the highest mountain in the world, but K2 is the most difficult. She kills one of the four people that she allows to summit and statistically, you have almost as much chance of dying on her as you do summiting.
K2 to me has always felt malevolent.
It's not just that she doesn't want to be climbed, it's that she is so vicious, so violently against human contact. Where Everest graciously allows us to attempt to summit her- K2 doesn't want you too. She throws everything she has at you, spiteful and furious. The American climber George Bell once bitterly snapped; "It's a savage mountain that tries to kill you." And I couldn't agree more.
One of the many problems with K2 is that you just can't predict the weather. Those pictures you see of queues on top of Everest only tell part of the story. The truth is that there are only a couple of days a year where summiting Everest is possible, so everyone who is sat waiting at base camp all make a mad dash at the same time. There isn't a constant queue to the top all year round, it's just on those handful of days where it's possible. The queue thins out the higher and higher you go as people begin to turn back.
No one is queuing to get to the top of K2.
The difference between K2 and Everest then, is that Everest gives you a few chances to summit. K2 does everything she can to stop you. She frequently throws storms where there shouldn't be any and that's a huge part of the problem, you can never predict the weather. It's the only higher-than-8000 metre peak in the entire world that's never been climbed during winter, or from its East face.
It always struck my climbing partner, Alexandr, as strange that I didn't want to climb K2. I mean, she's a big deal- few professional climbers would consider themselves worthy of the title without having K2 under their belt. I just never liked her energy. We've climbed several others in her range, but I was happy to say that I'd never attempted K2. The only time I was ever tempted was when the sponsorship offer came in. An obscene amount of money, enough to fund our climbs for the next three years at least. Just one climb. One attempt on K2 and we could climb anywhere we liked, sponsor or no sponsor.
I said no in the end. I can feel that she doesn't like me, she doesn't want me to climb her and that's ok, I respect her and I'm not narcissistic enough to believe that I can overcome her. You have to respect the mountain. Edmund Hillary, the first person to summit Everest famously said; "It is not the mountain that we conquer, but ourselves."
I think a lot of climbers would do well to remember that.
Alexandr tried to talk me round to taking the K2 sponsorship in that persuasive way of his, the one that he's used since met on a group climb at the age of 16. We've rarely been apart since.
Once Alexandr saved my life. He broke that unspoken climbers code, the one where you save your own life and don't play the hero. He dragged me 1000 metres down one of the harshest mountains in the Andes after I'd fractured my leg. It lost him part of his arm, the muscles in one cheek and the bulk of his nose to frostbite. It almost killed the both of us. It took weeks to recover and the first thing I said to him when I could speak again was that he was a fucking idiot.
Somehow he suits the mangled face the mountain left him with. He wouldn't care if he didn't.
We've seen the world in a different way to normal people. Snowy, impossible wastelands have been our life. Isolation and cold and triumph. I remember my sister asking with genuine curiosity how the weeks and months of endless snow didn't drive me to insanity, and I told her the truth- to me it looks the way a meadow might look to her, heartbreakingly beautiful.
My nephew, Noah, wants to be a climber. He clomps about the house in a pair of old crampons I gave him and wears his neon ski jacket everywhere, even to bed. My sister often asks when I'll have children of my own, but the truth is that if I had children, I would have to give up climbing. This sort of risky lifestyle isn't the sort a father should lead, so I have never imagined children in my future. I could never imagine not wanting to give my all to my children. It's not in my personality to do things by halves and I feel in the strangest way as though they would steal me, take me away from the mountains- as though my life isn't my own to give them.
This morning I watched as the dawn broke, crisp and bright. The Andes again, this time a short, stubby peak that is far more challenging than it looks on a map. I relish the technicalities. The more issues, the more difficultly, the better for me. I like to work with the mountain, see the route that it allows me to take. I spent the hour before dawn going over the plans and map we drew up.
In a few minutes more, I'll go and wake Alexandr. He can sleep like the dead, no matter how cold it is, no matter what sort of challenging situation we're in, nothing wakes him until I unzip the tent and present him with a cup of coffee, made with fresh snow. There's no taste on earth like the rich bitterness of coffee with the pure, freshness of melted snow. It's the perfect way to wake up, especially when your body is cramping from the exertion of yesterdays brutal climb and bracing itself for todays.
I can't sleep like Alexandr. 5 hours absolute maximum then I'm awake, looking over the routes, waiting for dawn to crack. It's my favourite time of day, dawn. It suits my quiet, reflective personality, I think. Just me, perhaps a Sherpa or guide to sit and enjoy the quietness before Alexandr wakes up with his vibrant energy and loud voice. He often tells me I overthink. I counter that he underthinks- but perhaps this is why we are so ideally suited to climb together.
It's a quiet morning. Beautiful. Clear. The first rays of light hit the huge, soaring mountain peak above us, making her glow soft gold as the sun rose, creeping it's much welcome warmth across the mountain. And I savoured it, this moment alone with the mountain while everyone else slept. It felt like a gift, that she let me look upon her beauty- of all of the billions of people in the world, this was our moment. Me and her. No other soul to see the heartbreaking majesty of her gracefully meeting the dawns light.
6000 metres she soars above us, welcoming and challenging us at the same time.
I can hear her calling.
She sounds like home.